Jeffrey Hart [Bashing Bush From the Right]

The American Conservative ^ | August 28, 2006 | Jeffrey Hart

[Fiji Hill]

Jeffrey Hart's article is part of a symposium entitled, "What is Left? What is Right? Does it matter?" It is apparent from his comments that FDR's New Deal "saved capitalism" and that President Bush is "an ideologue remote from fact" and "the worst president in history." that he has strayed off the reservation.

[sittnick]

I didn't even know he was still alive. He used to be printed in the old Jackson owned New Haven Register until he was pulled DECADES ago.

[BelegStrongbow]

I don't think so. I do support the President, but not on conservative grounds. My grounds for support are entirely pragmatic and necessary, not conservative.

What is interesting about Mr. Hart's analysis is that he argues against idealism and then suggests that to prosecute the war in Iraq is to wallow in idealism. I disagree. We are pursuing a strategic purpose in Iraq (not least among our goals is to ensure that nobody takes us for a paper tiger any time soon).

Thing is, to fully agree even with Mr. Hart's conviction, we must agree that Buckley's definition rules our President out and that it is a realistic and adequate definition of conservatism.

I'm not sure about either of those two propositions, myself.

[California Patriot]

This is pathetic, even for The American Conservative.

Hart should have submitted it to the LA Times. It could have run alongside pieces by Kevin Phillips and John Dean.

[Sooner1938]

I happen to agree with Mr. Hart's opinion of this president. I voted for Bush three times; twice for governor and once for president. Right now, I wouldn't vote for him as dog catcher. IMO, he's been a total disaster as U.S. president.

At one time, I thought his old man was the worst president we'd ever had (though I voted for him in '88 also) and so I was reluctant to vote for young Bush the first time because I figured he had a lot of his old man in him. Sure 'nuff, my instincts were right.

The ONLY things he's done with which I agree is appoint some conservatives to the federal bench and cut taxes.

[California Patriot]

I understand your frustration with W., and I share much of it.

However, if Kerry had been elected, we would now have a solid hard-left majority on the Supreme Court, 6-3. Think about that.

As it is, the Court is 4-4-1. If Stevens had retired this year, we might very well have had a majority on SCOTUS for the first time since the 1930s. If he retires next year and we have 52 seats or more in the Senate, it's still possible. Unlikely, but possible.

[meandog]

That brings us to George W. Bush, the most ideological president in American history. He thinks in abstractions and acts on them. No president stands at a greater remove from Burke’s critique of ideology. His foreign policy—the march of democracy—is immune to fact and, notably in Iraq, to a Burkean sense of history. In economics (supply-side dogma, calamitous debt), in science (Intelligent Design), in his opposition to stem-cell research and therapy, Bush has been a brass-bound ideologue. On stem-cell research, Bush formulates his opposition this way: “It’s wrong to destroy life in order to save life.” His first use of the word “life” refers to a few insensate cells, his second to an actual sick human being.

DUH-pee-yew's problem is that he is arrogant and recalcitrant. He won't listen to any but his sycophantic advisers or his buddies in the high corporate places he had become so comfortable in before his inauguration--the general, who know how to fight a war is poo-pooed in favor of Rummy's bizarre theory of limited engagement, the conservative economist who warns of high deficits in the wake of guns AND butter is silenced in the wake of spending will fuel the economy (albeit temporarily), and the heralder of how illegal immigration hurts the country is said to be an alarmist. True, we all love tax cuts and responsible Constitutionalist Supreme Court appointments but why can't we have a winning strategy in Iraq, and reasonable spending and immigration policies too?

[Fiji Hill]

Do you really believe that George W. Bush is worse than James Buchanan, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton?

[expatpat]

Methinks we have a false-flag newbie, here.

[massadvj]

While I agree in principle that Bush is not a conservative by most interpretations of that term, and I am not particularly enamored of him, I hesitate to pile on. Lord knows we've heard plenty of criticism from the right from the likes of George Will, William Buckley, Pat Buchanan and others.

But beyond selling a few magazines and elevating the stature of such writers in their own minds, what positive purpose does all this Bush bashing serve? Here Hart laments the fact that GWB is too "ideological" and "not pragmatic enough". Fine. Was Hart himself pragmatic enough to consider the political ramifications of his anti-Bush diatribe in an election year in which the WOT, and the possibility of Iranian nukes, is front and center? Would Hart truly prefer a leftist pragmatist appeaser to a "compassionate conservative" ideologue? He does not say, but certainly his words will be used as fodder toward electing a congress of appeasers by politically softening up the President from his right flank.

Yes, I held my nose when I voted for this president. Yes, there are things that disappoint me. But I can't understand how on earth we worked ourselves into such a funk with the economic growth rates up, unemployment down, and things basically humming along on the domestic front. Is it the war? OK. 2001 terrorist-supporting nations: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. 2006 terrorist-supporting nations: Iran and Syria. We are winning this thing and letting the MSM and Dims capture defeat from the throes of victory.

Pretty soon we are going to have to buck up and get to work on winning this election. I, for one, intend to remain part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

[Sooner1938]

You're wrong. And you people who follow this "Republican" Pied Piper need to take off the blinders. Don't any of you think for yourselves or does Karl Rove do your thinking?

I'm a CONSERVATIVE while you're a Bushbot.

[chipengineer]

>2001 terrorist-supporting nations: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. 2006 terrorist-supporting nations: Iran and Syria.

Don't forget Libya in 2001.

[expatpat]

And I have a bridge....

[Durus]

For Hobbes, man’s heart was savage. In the mythic pre-social “state of nature,” life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” That required the restraints of strong government. For Locke, in contrast, “the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it … and reason … is that law.” Thus the restraints of government could be mild. Perhaps Hobbes was conservative, Locke liberal.

I stopped reading right here. First of all I could debate his synopsis of both Hobbes and Lockes ideologies. However, even if his synopsis was accurate, he then goes further stating that Hobbes was a conservative and Locke was a liberal when by the very synopsis he gave demonstrates that the opposite is true. Unless of course he is talking about the definitions of liberal and conservative that existed in the 18th making his whole essay rather pointless. Talk about your "ideologues remote from fact".

[Dane]

This isn't conservative, this is from pat buchanan's political rag, which means neo-populist national socialism.

[massadvj]

Don't forget Libya in 2001.

Absolutely correct. Thank you!

[massadvj]

he then goes further stating that Hobbes was a conservative and Locke was a liberal

By the standards of their time, they were. Just as Jefferson was a "liberal" based on an early 19th century definition of that term. Today's conservatives would have far more in common with Locke, and Jefferson, than today's liberals. I think Hart was referring to the classical definitions, but he should have made that clear.

[Durus]

I did mention this in my comment. I stand by my statement that if he is referring to the 18th/19th definition of those term then the entire essay becomes pointless.

[massadvj]

Yes I agree bump.

[BlackElk]

Sooner38: You are new here. I suspect that those who read your posts will decide for themselves whether you are a conservative as you claim or whether you are a Jeffrey Hart style superannuated paleopantywaist who had little role to play in the conservative movement in the first place and has not improved with age.

Except for the fact that the otherwise forgettable Hart received patronage from a much younger Bill Buckley, would any of us have heard of him???? Probably not.

Now Hart is dredged up by the eccentrics who surround Pat Buchanan in his dotage because Hart is willing to trade actual conservatism for half-vast racism and "blood and soil" politics which got a quite deservedly bad reputation in central Europe in the last century and the reputation of that way of thinking has also has not improved with age.

I once traveled about a thousand miles for what I then saw as the privilege of voting against Karl Rove for College Republican National Chairman. Five of us voted that way against about one hundred who voted otherwise. Terry Dolan and Professor Bob Edgeworth were two of us and are now dead. Three survive. I do not know how the other two feel but I would gladly apologize to Rove who was either a lot better than I thought then or has improved vastly since.

I am not happy with various policies of Dubya but I am verrrrry happy with a nearly reformed SCOTUS represented by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, a reinvigorated foreign policy and military policy, whatever their flaws, and a delightfully stubborn administration which does not grovel before leftist onslaughts. Only another judge or two and we may have a voting majority who can read and apply the constitution. Professor Hart will be gravely disappointed, raving enthusiast for abortion and social anarchy that he is.

Personally, I hope that Rove can be persuaded to stick around for another eight years of pushing pins through the voodoo dolls that represent the social revolutionary enemies of our nation and our civilization. His idea of President McKinley as a good role model deserves consideration and his emulation of Mark Hanna and Matt Quay likewise.

AND, just what is a "Bushbot????" Is that a Republican in touch with reality who drives leftist barking moonbats to breathlessly call C-SPAN Commies in the Morning (Washington Journal) to breathlessly grovel before C-SPAN as the "one remaining voice of truth in the American media" (for letting the moonbats call in with their curious conspiracy theories and treating them as though they were arguably human?????

Time for Jeffrey Hart to cart off his undistinguished 90-year old irrelevant carcass to the paleograveyard of broken nightmares where he belongs.